Chapter Text
All he wants is to sleep, but they just won’t leave him alone.
“Prepare to move…. And move.”
He’s swung like a sack of potatoes from the rattling, shuddering gurney onto a hospital trolley. Someone strokes his forehead and a motherly voice says, “It’s okay, hun.”
He wants to scream at them, to tell him to leave him alone. To let him sleep, that he’s fine. I’m fine. But the words stick in his throat and it’s like he can’t breathe. He can't breathe. The light’s too bright and it hurts his eyes.
“24 year old male, found 25 minutes ago. GCS was 12 on arrival. Now fallen to 11. Heart rate 142. BP is 89/40. O-two sats are 89% on 4 Litres.”
“Let’s get the rebreather on him. Sasha, get an ABG.”
They’re poking and pulling at him, interfering with his mouth, his nose. An elastic snaps on tight around the back of his head as a mask goes over his face.
Please stop.
There’s a sharp pain in the tender flesh of his inner elbow as they take blood. He can feel it being drawn out of him and into those little vacuum tubes. He shudders.
“Get a litre of Ringer’s into him, stat. And check his glucose.”
Stop.
They’re pulling at his clothes. Trying to expose his chest. And for a moment he thinks, good. That at least they’ll do something about the hated Harvard hoodie. Except then he remembers it’s Scott’s air force sweatshirt that he’s wearing.
There’s the distinctive sound of a scissors slicing through cloth. Scott will be mad.
Please.
They expose him. Some deep part of him is mortified, because now they can all see him, his pale, pigeon chest, his bony collarbones, even his ugly appendix scars, standing out bright red against parchment skin. If only they would leave him alone. Why won’t they listen?
Leads, sticky and repulsive go on his chest.
“Hun, don’t do that. Don’t do that, sweetheart.” They’re trying to restrain him now, his arms are being bent back around. “Did anyone catch his name?”
“’s shirt says, S. Tracy. He’s an air force captain by the looks of it.”
“Anyone get a history here? OD?”
“Not sure. I don’t see tract marks. We’re awaiting collateral.”
“Where are the damn paramedics gone off to?”
“Glucose level, 8.3.”
“Let’s run a full tox screen.”
Yeah, that makes sense. He’s an addict. Run a tox screen. Better to be sure.
Everything is hazy. Outlines over outlines, like one of Virgil’s pencil sketches. Faces. Lights. A sharp stab in his wrist as they take more blood. Breathe in blue, breathe out… he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.
“Captain? Captain Tracy, we need you to hold still.”
They’re calling Scott, which is ridiculous. He needs to correct them on that point urgently. Scott can’t hear them. Scott’s halfway around the world, in Afghanistan, fighting a war he can’t win. John had asked him not to go, hadn’t he? Or had he? Maybe he had meant to, but only ended up shushing Alan when he cried at the airport? He can’t remember anymore.
Scott’s not here, he wants to tell them, but hang on, has he got it wrong again? He has, hasn’t he? Somehow he’s always getting it wrong.
There’s an awful buzzing now, flies attracted to a rotting carcass, settling and rising in a black cloud. Why can’t he breathe?
“Captain, don’t pull at that. It’s okay, love.”
“Are we going to need to get security?”
Stop!
“John!”
In the rush of buzzing, brutal, distorted sound, Scott’s voice is sharp as a blade, a line of lightning in the dark.
“Sir, you can’t go in there. Sir!”
A hand goes around his wrist, as heavy as a handcuff. “Johnny, it’s okay. Stop.”
You’re always telling me what to do. Stop telling me what to do.
“Johnny, it’s okay. I'm here.”
“Are you with this young man?”
“Yes.”
“His C.O?”
“He’s not military… I mean, sorry… no. He’s my brother. I’m his older brother.”
Jeez, John thinks. Do you always have to bring that up? I’m his older brother. I’m his better brother. Subtract off me and you get him.
“Were you the one who found him?”
“Yes. He was on the floor. I was only out of the apartment twenty minutes.”
“Did you witness any tongue biting? Jerking movements? Any incontinence?”
“No.”
“Does your brother have any medical history that you know of?”
“He had an appendectomy, age 14. Radial ulnar fracture when he came off his bike at ten. He’s allergic to penicillin.” There’s a scratch suddenly in Scott’s voice. “He has a methamphetamine addiction. 18 months or so, we think. But he’s been clean for 62 days.”
62 days. Someone’s been counting where John hasn’t. That someone knows how long, that Scott knows. That the number of days is somehow quantifiable, makes him feel strange, and squirmy and somehow better.
Scott knows.
That seems like it’s important, but the thought is a Penrose Stairs, a polygon with too many sides. He just can’t make sense of it now.
“I see. Did you find anything on him? Or around him? Pills or empty bottles?”
“No.” And for a confused moment, John thinks, Dad?
“Were there any signs that –”
“If my brother says he’s not using, he’s not using.”
“Mr Tracy…”
“Captain.”
“Captain Tracy, I know this is a hard thing to discuss, but the truth is up to 90 per cent of addicts relapse. There’s no shame in it.”
90 per cent. The number is a lot higher than plain old 62. The fear eats into him, like a rat gnawing on his guts. Because of course he’s going to fail, of course. Of course. He’s failing as we speak.
He’s a failure.
“I understand that.” Scott’s voice suddenly goes soft, the steel edge, the Dadness vanishing. “But he doesn’t. Doctor, I know you don’t know me, or my brother. I understand that you are just doing your job, and I’m happy to provide you with any information I can, but let me be clear, my brother is the stupidest, stubbornest, bravest person I know. He will grind himself into a nub rather than go back to that place. He will rend himself in two rather than fail again. So this. Is. Not. That. Please, look again.”
“Understood.”
“John,” and now Scott’s voice is neither soft nor hard, not Dad’s voice anymore, but a voice remembered from long ago, to a night of bug bites and burnt sausages and a glimmering moon caught in the sea, and of two boys lying of the beach and one telling stories of thunderheads and cumulus cloud formations and the great swell of the sky, and the other weaving tales about the space between the moon and the stars and the great expanse beyond and how he wished he could go there some day, even though he knew he never would.
And how a pair of blue eyes had fixed on him, earnest and honest and unafraid and said, “Of course you can, Johnny. You can do anything you want.”
“You’re going to be okay. I promise. Whatever this is we’ll get through. Just hang on for me?” A hand closes over his knuckles.
And then John’s falling into the black well of nothing again. And he’s a failure, and he hates himself and he wants to die.
But Scott believes in him, and that’s something.